Siva Shankar of Corporate Investment Banking, Citigroup, conducts Diksha at SJMSOM

Mr. Siva Shankar discussed about Global Special Situations Group (“GSSG”) in India which is an on-balance sheet proprietary investment group with expertise and presence in all major financial centers. GSSG is the the merger of Citigroup’s restructuring teams in Corporate High Yield, Emerging Markets and Real Estate. GSSG allocates capital globally to credit-oriented special situations with over 80 investment and servicing professionals and $5 billion in available capital around the globe. GSSG commits capital to lead or participate in the restructuring of corporate borrowers or to assist institutions to successfully reposition themselves through divestment of their non-core or non-performing assets and directing investment to their core businesses.

Mr. Siva Shankar went on to explain how CitiGroup’s GSSG invests in 3 overlapping strategies of liquidations of closed enterprises, restructurings of recovering corporate borrowers and new capital commitments to borrowers.

Mr. Siva Shankar also explained about the investment strategies prevalent in CitiGroup’s GSSG. GSSG evaluates each situation individually. The primary focus is preserving value in the core or healthy businesses. GSSG focuses on industry cycles and the opportunities created by events. When committing capital GSSG will consider four basic alternatives. Event-Driven Investments in debt or hard assets, new money commitments, Capital Structure Arbitrage and Private Equity. Mr. Siva Shankar also provided the key guidelines to proceeding.

GSSG has staff in 9 locations in Asia, India being one of them. Speaking about GSSG in India, Mr. Siva Shankar talked about special situations like the product set which involves NPL Pools, Corporate Restructuring, Hard Assets, Mezzanine financing and Equity. He also discussed about GGSG exposure in fields like cement, hotel, metal packaging, auto, telecom etc.

It was a highly interactive session with Mr. Siva Shankar addressing the queries of the students of SJMSOM, IIT Bombay.